* Interest in optimization technology continues to rise
There is no shortage of demand for more bandwidth to remote locations. The combination of more branch offices housing more employees needing access to more applications dictates increased spending on bandwidth. Or does it?
There is no shortage of demand for more bandwidth to remote locations. The combination of more branch offices housing more employees needing access to more applications dictates increased spending on bandwidth.
Or does it?
A growing number of organizations are using or evaluating optimization tools, including bandwidth optimization, application acceleration, and route optimization. In fact, in Nemertes’ Advanced Communications Services research, 65% of companies reported using optimization tools, and 13% said they’re evaluating them, up from 55% and 11% in 2007, respectively.
And, you guessed it! There was a significant correlation between companies using optimization tools and those reporting no increases in bandwidth or decreases in bandwidth. How significant? Every company that is decreasing bandwidth or staying flat is using optimization tools. They attribute their lower-than-average bandwidth requirements to the use of optimization technologies that compress traffic, enabling them to prolong their usage of a specific access speed despite increases in demand.
Moving forward, we expect the adoption of optimization tools to increase at a fast clip, not only in terms of the number of companies using them, but also in how pervasive they are within each company. In 2004, 44% of organizations used optimization tools. The increase to 65% in 4 years is impressive, but not as huge as other emerging technologies.
We have found anecdotally that companies who have implemented optimization are using the products in more locations. Once they found success with basic bandwidth optimization between two sites, they expanded to more locations – and they bought into optimization as a technology, using it for application optimization and route optimization, as well. Overall, companies report typical paybacks of about 12 months.
Numerous vendors offer products in these spaces, including Cisco, Citrix, Expand Networks, Juniper, Nortel, Packeteer, Riverbed, and more. If you haven’t started evaluating these products, you should start now. Vendors generally offer products for various sizes of locations and access speeds, so the options are plentiful.
